Inbox Zero: I did it my way
10/10 '15
My friend... I was like you. I had over 9,000 messages in my inboxes. Plural.
I am currently doing inbox zero for both my personal and professional inboxes. That means that on a daily basis I hit zero messages in my inbox.
But alas, during a recent upheaval in my personal life, I let this go for my personal inbox for a while. Then I reinstated it. So the memory of how I did that is fresh in my mind, and I have the opportunity to share that with you.
Inbox zero is not a new idea, but everyone has their own ways of staying there. What follows is my own bag of tricks.
How to transition to inbox zero
1. Set aside an hour or more, just this once, to skim through the last 7 days of email and act on anything important. Important is defined as "if you don't reply to it today something bad will happen." Otherwise... no. Ignore it for now.
2. "Archive" everything. Absolutely everything. Hit "select all" and "archive," not delete. (*) This gets you around the anxiety of Maybe Deleting Something Important. You're not, you're just archiving it, okay? You can search for it later if you really want to.
(If you are not using gmail, fix that, or use something else which offers an "archive" button just as good and convenient.)
Instantly, you are in a much better position to act on the next truly important email that arrives in your life. But you can do better than that. Here's how I stay there on a daily basis.
How to stay at inbox zero
1. Once a day, sit down to do your "inbox zero," as described below. Make this a good time. You've got your coffee and a few minutes before you have to dash off; interruptions are as minimal as you can make them.
If this is your work inbox, just take the time. Your coworkers want you to be on top of your email. (**) If this is your personal inbox and you're a stay-at-home parent, I sympathize with the level of interruption you're dealing with, but again, it's an investment in you that your family ideally will willingly make.
2. Every time you get an email from a mailing list, political cause, etc., either read it right now, delete it on the spot, or unsubscribe. If you are disinclined to read it now, during your designated email time... what do you think the chances are you'll read it, ever? Absolutely friggin' zero. Unsubscribe. Every time you unsubscribe an angel gets its wings.
3. Every email should be replied to, forwarded to someone who can better handle it, acted on right now, deleted, archived for reference, or turned into a TO-DO.
Hint: if there is any extra information you need before you can act on the email, reply and ask for it and hit "archive!" That thread is gone from your inbox until they reply. You've just bought yourself one day, in most cases, before you have to do anything with this again. If the other party never replies, it was not important to them either. And you have documentation of that. You're the responsible one. Move on.
Most things can either be acted on right now, during your inbox zero time, or are unlikely to get done ever, and keeping them around is pointless. The exceptions... the reasonable tasks that take multiple days to complete or require something you won't have until later... belong on your TO-DO list.
4. Do not use your email inbox as a TO-DO list. You need a separate TO-DO list. Paper works surprisingly well, but there are innumerable TO-DO list apps. Even gmail has a little built-in TO-DO list feature tucked away. It's a choice on the "GMail" menu at upper left. There are third-party mobile apps that can work with it, too.
Hint: you can create a simple TO-DO, then archive the message, and search for it later when you need the details to act on the TO-DO item.
I also use calendar reminders in my phone for time-sensitive TO-DOs.
5. If you really, sincerely get emails you don't have to act on right now but would love to read later, create a "read later" folder for fun and edifying things only and move those messages there. This is not for actionable stuff. Actionable stuff, you should act on right now, or create a TO-DO. It is your cookie jar of cool things to read when you feel like it, not guilt trips you really must read. Those... you read. Right now. Or you don't mean it and you should archive them and move on with your life.
6. Accept that you're going to archive some things that turn out to be important later. It's OK. If it really matters to the other party more than you thought, they will ask about it again. In this case you are no worse off than you were before you got on top of your email world. And you're going to do this much less often than you did before.
7. When you get an email in the middle of the day... relax! You can reply to it now, and sometimes you should. But you could also just wait until tomorrow's inbox zero time. The absolute worst case is that you'll deal with it in one day. And that means you don't have to panic and jump on it right now.
Benefits of inbox zero
I hardly ever freak out when I get an email in the middle of the day, or at 3am for that matter. I never have that anxiety that comes from worrying that if I don't act on it this very millisecond, it will be lost forever in my inbox.
Instead I know that I will act on it during my daily inbox zero time.
My friends and coworkers took a little time to adjust to this "once a day" rhythm, but they like it soooo much better than the old "sometimes miraculous, sometimes totally unreliable" Tom.
My anxiety level has dropped because I know I'm responsible. I don't think I'm on top of my shit, I know I am.
And I really like not being a flake.
Plus: bragging rights.
(*) With gmail, "select all" will initially select the current page's worth of messages, but there's a little prompt asking if you want to select all the messages in your inbox. Yes! You do!
(**) Yes, I have the luxury of a job where my coworkers behave rationally, and you may not. My condolences. But I still think this will probably be a net positive for you in terms of Not Getting Fired, as compared to being 6 months behind on email.
1. Boomerang for GMail (http://www.boomeranggmail.com/) is a great plugin that will allow you to do things like "hide this email from me until date X". So it's not visible in your Inbox, but will show back up on a future date (like, say, the week before the show in the email).
2. This is what I would do since I like to try to avoid additional apps/plugins/etc where I can. In GMail, when you've opened the email, click the More dropdown. Under that menu, there's an option for "Create an event." Do that. Set it up for the date of the show. Google will automagically add the contents of the email to the 'notes' section of the calendar event. BONUS: If, like me, you're terrible about checking for that event, set a reminder. You can set email reminder so it will show back up in your inbox when you want to be paying attention to that event. That might sound a little labor intensive, but I suspect that will help to reduce the number of "well, mayyyyyybe I'll care about it later" emails you hold onto.
I figure if it's important enough, they will resend.
I need to unsubscribe more though. That's primarily why I am so brutal with the select all- delete combination.
Additional bullet points from me:
* The Task List in GMail is GREAT - especially when you combine it with your Google Calendar. You can attach docs/notes/presentations and things to your Calendar events. This is a killer combination and it's FREE. I'm a little worried about Tasks sticking around forever because they haven't done much with it in recent years, but there hasn't been any real talk of killing it off.
*Google Keep (keep.google.com) is another great list / note creation tool that is freefreefree. I use it VERY heavily.
*If you would like something outside the Googlesphere to use for your ToDo list, I can recommend ToDoist.com - they have a ton of plugins that make your life fairly easy including the sharing of ToDo items, one click "make a todo item out of this email", and a bunch of other stuff. There is a free and paid version, but the paid version is something like $25/year. I'm going to buy in.
*The one potential exception I might have with this list is this: There is a way to use your Inbox as a ToDo list if you're good about reviewing things. I can't seem to get into that habit, thus the separate app, but you might be better at it than me. How, you ask? Use GMail's label system. Label items as ToDo and then make sure you have that label visible in your sorting options along the left hand side of your inbox. One click to see all your todo items - even those that have been archived! Done with the item? Click on the little X that removes the label. It's not as clean/fast/efficient as some of the separate apps, but if you're a fan of David Allen's GTD, and you're trying to focus on reducing your 'buckets', this is one way to do that. For most of us though, I'm with Tom - don't do it.
Everyone has their own systems, but I learned a ton of tricks thanks to your post. Thank you!
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